Re: The Road with no Branches argument

From: Immortalist (Reanimater_2000_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 10/22/04 

Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 23:01:52 -0700

When we say that a person chooses among several possible behaviors is there
really a choice or does it just seem like there is a choice? Do people just
(through the action of their more complex brains) simply have better behaviors
than wasps, while still being totally mechanical in executing those behaviors?
Dennett gives his definition of determinism on page one: all physical events are
caused or determined by the sum total of all previous events. This definition
dodges a question that many people feel should not be dodged: if we repeatedly
replayed the universe from the same point in time would it always reach the same
future? Since we have no way of performing this experiment, this question is a
long-term classic in philosophy and physicists have tried to interpret the
results of other experiments in various ways in order to figure out the answer to
this question. A related current fantasy game for physicists is to imagine that
there are multiple universes and every time there is quantum indeterminacy each
possibility occurs and new universes branch off. Since the 1920s physicists have
been trying to convince themselves that quantum indeterminacy can in some way
explain Free Will. Dennett dismisses this idea as silly. How, he asks, can random
resolutions of quantum-level events provide people with any control over their
behavior?

Since Dennett wrote Elbow Room in 1983 there has been a futile, but still
on-going attempt by some physicists to answer this question by assuming that the
brain is a device for controlling quantum indeterminacy so as to construct
behavioral choice. Dennett argues that such efforts to salvage Free Will by
finding a way out of the prison of determinism are wasted.

Dennett discusses many types of Free Will. Many philosophers have claimed that
determinism and Free Will are incompatible. What the physicists seem to be trying
to construct is type of Free Will that involves a way for brains to make use of
quantum indeterminacy so as to make choices that alter the universe in our favor,
or if there are multiple universes, maybe brains can choose among the possible
universes. Dennett suggests that we can have another kind of Free Will, a type of
Free Will which we can be perfectly happy with even if it does not give us the
power to act in more than one way at any given time. Dennett is able to accept
determinism and Free Will at the same time. How so?

The type of Free Will that Dennett thinks we have is finally stated clearly in
the last chapter of the book: the power to be active agents, biological devices
that respond to our environment with rational, desirable courses of action.
Dennett has slowly, through the course of the book, stripped the idea of
behavioral choice from the idea of Free Will. How can we have Free Will if we do
not have real behavioral choice? Dennett tries to substitute control for choice.
If our mechanical brains are in control of our behavior and our brains produce
good behaviors for us, then do we really need choice? Is an illusion of
behavioral choices just as good as actual choices? Is our sensation of having the
freedom to execute more than one behavior at a given time really just an
illusion? Dennett tries not to beat his readers over the head with this issue,
but I think he should have.

If all people have is an illusion of behavioral choice, if people are just
machines behaving in the only way they can, then what about personal
responsibility? How can we hold people responsible for and punish them for their
behaviors if they have no choice in how they behave? Dennett gives a two part
answer to this question. First, we hold people responsible for their actions
because we know from historical experience that this is an effective means to
make people behave in a socially acceptable way. Second, holding people
responsible only works when combined with the fact that people can be informed of
the fact that they are being held responsible and respond to this state of
affairs by controlling their behavior so as to avoid punishment. People who break
the rules set by society and get punished may be behaving in the only way they
can, but if we did not hold them accountable for their actions, people would
behave even worse than they do with the threat of punishment. This is a totally
utilitarian approach to the issue of responsibility, there is no need for moral
indignation when people break the rules of proper behavior. Is it, then, moral to
punish people who are unable to do other than break a rule? Yes, people have the
right to come together and improve their condition by creating rules and
enforcing them. We would be worse off if we did not do so. Again, an argument for
utility.

One final issue, if people do not have real behavioral choices, why not collapse
into fatalism? Again, Dennett's argument is that we may not have behavioral
choice, but we do have control of our behavior. Dennett asks us to look around at
the universe and ask, can I even conceive of beings whose wills are freer than
our own? For Dennett, the answer to this question is, no, not really. In Elbow
Room he tries to explain why all the attempts that people have tried to make to
prove that people have behavioral choice have failed and are, in the final
analysis, not really important anyhow. As humans, we are as much in control of
our behavior as anything in the universe. As humans, we have the best chance to
produce good behavior. We should be satisfied with what we have and not fret over
our lack of behavioral choice.

As usual, I find it very hard to disagree with Dennett. My largest complaint
about Elbow Room is that it does not satisfactorily deal with the issue of why we
feel so strongly that we do have behavioral choice. I agree with Dennett that we
do not have choice, but why do we feel like we do? My answer to this question is
that our sensation of having behavioral choice has been carefully selected by
evolution. The well developed human sensation of having Free Will and being able
to select among possible behaviors has strong survival value. People who loose
the feeling that they can plan alternative behaviors and execute their choice of
possible behaviors tend to become fatalistic and stop struggling for survival. As
Dennett writes, Belief in Free Will is a necessary condition for having Free
Will. When we are planning for the future and thinking about possible actions to
take in the future, we are expending considerable amounts of biologically
expensive resources (brain power). Evolution has designed us to feel strongly
that all of our effort of planning pays off, that we control what we do. If this
connection between our brains efforts to model reality and predict the future and
so make possible good outcomes is disconnected from our sense of self and our
will, then fatalism and self-destructive behaviors are close at hand.

So at the end of our philosophical hair-splitting, we reach the same conclusion
as the average man on the street, but we have some additional baggage. If we
accept Dennett's arguments, then we recognize that we have no real behavioral
choices, but we continue to behave as if we do. I would say that when we feel
like we are making a behavioral choice, this is a very convenient way for a brain
to make sure that it keeps planning and struggling for survival. Our conscious
thoughts never see the detailed working of our mechanical brains, we can never
directly sense that we never really have behavioral choice, that our brains are
deterministic machines. Our brains are designed to present us with a tantalizing
array of apparent possibilities and the sensation that we have choice, while in
reality there is only one way things will work out in the end. So, at the end of
our philosophical journey we must be satisfied that our brains are in control and
we must content ourselves with behaving as if we have behavioral choice, even
though we know we do not. Nature has played a devious trick on us. Grin and bare
it. It could be worse, think what it would be like to be a wasp.

http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/System/8870/philosophicus/Elbows.html
http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/System/8870/books/HawkTime.html

Relevant Pages

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